Siren Festival 2008 is hot and crowded. Not only in front of the stages (and behind the stages) but on the boardwalk and the beach.

In a mere matter of hours Brendan Canning and his Broken Social Scene bandmates will close the Stillwell stage in front of a crowd that stretches from just short of the boardwalk out halfway to Surf Avenue. But playing acoustic guitar on a teeming seaside is not his thing.

So Frankie and Annette we’re not. Though this is the first Possibly 4th Street where both the film crew and the performer stood a good chance of taking home that most unwanted of shore souvenirs, sand in the underwear.

And yet we persevere. Through heat, a mass of half-naked humanity (and not always in a good way), and a certain grittiness where you do not want grittiness.

And so just three days before his first solo album, Broken Social Scene Presents Brendan Canning’s Something For All of Us . . . (if you don’t think branding’s important, just ask Lindsey Buckingham), band co-founder Canning plays a song so new that for today, at least, it’s called “Song at Coney Island.”

I guess it’d be kind of difficult to do on water, but I felt like I had to ask. Tell me the name of a book you’ve read at least twice.

I think Saul Bellow’s book Humboldt’s Gift.

And a movie that you’ve seen at least three times.

Airplane!

And for the boat, the trailer and the motor home, who’s your favorite Beatle?

I guess it’s John. That was my grade six speech. The first run of the speech I didn’t quite have my shit together, if you can believe it. So I got up, started to do my speech, then I kind of just told my teacher like, ‘I’m going to need a little more time. I don’t quite have it together today.’

That is quite a level of maturity for such a young man.

Well, you know, there’s only so much bluffing you can do when you’re in front of the class. And so I took it back to the woodshop, woodshed, whatever, and, you know, I think I probably ended out the speech with, ‘It’s not good to kill anyone. Especially John Lennon.’